POEMS

POETRY TIMELINE  Introduction:

 

Hello to new poet friend, teacher of music at University of Hartford, Susan Mardinly !  

This page is  Dedicated to my Pisces Poet Mother, who passed away at the Winter Holidays 2017,  at just shy of ninety-two.    And to my Father , also gone in 1999, who was her love poem darling in his Army Air Corps days-  even then, the flyboys got the girls.      But Mother saved his soul from it as well as being a fine keeper of his heart.   Evenings as we grew up, it was mid-century "Blast from the Past" at our home - with the need to make fallout shelters being discussed and the new Nike Site less than two miles away from our beautiful residential prosperous town on Southport Harbor.       In case it came to that, our parents had the table meetings after dinner, as though preparing, just in case they might be our teachers as well as parents in the shelter.     So we were walking encyclopedias if we cared to be and  all creative.   But that's another story.   I wish there were copies of my parents'  love poems.    Their marriage timed out  and it was painful, but  they helped one another as possible, to make the new lives, did well and lived long with new partners in time.   Every good thing they won and earned they shared,  and taught us so lovingly to do the same.  We have not let them down.

Robert Louis Stevenson "A Child's Garden of Verses" was my first poet and Shakespeare and My parents had three libraries: one in the den / living-room with books for everyone's eyes  - Bible, encyclopedia,  emergency medial books, and beautiful classics for young and old.  A second one in the kitchen for cookbooks;  a third in the upstairs hall closet shelf with the brains that might be criticized by the casual social view - technical books for professional and private use, " The experts" - Spock, Kinsey , Freud - Business studies and a few novels etc. that we children were not really supposed to get at, yet; and both parents had small secret stashes for private medical factoids and romance....we NEVER knew about these and it was never brought up, not even when we were grown.   Fun with a flashlight under our covers.  

From teen days:

  • Free verse and the "beatnik" poetry were key and exciting to us and a thing called "haiku"

  • Emma Lazarus' famous poem about the Statue of Liberty

  • Renewing friendship with Sara Teasdale's works - including the famous "The Look" ( but the kiss in Colin's eyes haunts me night and day )

  • Well known William Blake was a favorite - The Tiger and The Black Boy.

  • "I think that I shall never see, a word more wonderful than "We" - It's not an "-ist" , it's not an "-ism" , it just means US without a schism - by unknown

  • "Statement" - If I touch you, do not tremble, like a leaf silk-touched by dew; do not let the modest oneness of the act become destroyed. If I touch you, let the touch be just the gentle, quiet statement that I believe in you, as a bee believes in flower! " - Peter Kassan , at age 17 found by elle in 1965 and valid still.

  • "Do I contradict myself? I contain multitudes ! " - Walt Whitman

  • "Theme song to "High Noon" was HIS, in those days - "Do not forsake me..." sung by Tex Ritter, father of the beloved late John.

  • On the topic of gender equality there is "IF" from Nobel Laureate, Rudyard Kipling, to boys and the Girls version published later.

  • Song lyrics poetry charmed and inspire always - and lastingly: The Carpenters' "For all We know" was a theme song for my late husband and I , as we smiled at driving along, sightseeing the countryside

  • And even the "Fammmm - uhhhhh - leeee !!! " song with Mother Father Sister Brother on so many sunny afternoons!

A collection of poems, mine and those of friends, shared here as possible - Send a copy of your own poetry, and when there are enough of them, I will post them on their own page here.